Description
There is a western screech owl in this photograph, pressed into the crook of a dead tree with bare branches criss-crossing in front of him and blue sky behind. Gray on gray, bark on bark. This is very nearly what it looks like to walk straight past one, which most people do, most days.
Their plumage is matched to the trees they live in, and it is regional. Ours here in the Pacific Northwest are gray and finely vermiculated, the exact palette of wet Douglas fir bark and the lichen growing on it. Screech owls in other parts of the country run warmer — some rusty red enough to disappear into oak and hickory instead. The bird is wearing the local wood.
Here is something else about that face, now that you have found it. Owls are famously long-sighted and correspondingly bad at focusing up close — those enormous fixed-tube eyes are built to resolve a mouse across a clearing, not to examine something an inch from the beak. So they feel instead. The stiff hair-like bristles around the base of the bill, called rictal bristles, work as whiskers: touch sensors that tell the owl what it is holding and where its prey is in relation to its mouth, at exactly the distance where its eyes are useless.
This is a high-resolution digital download of the photograph, made in Portland, Oregon — yours to print for your home or office, set as a wallpaper, or simply keep.
What you’ll receive: a high-resolution JPEG, approximately 4192 × 2368 pixels in a wide crop — sharp enough to print at full photo quality up to about 14 × 8 inches at 300 DPI, and considerably larger for wall display. Delivered as an instant download the moment your order is complete.
License: Personal use only. Print it for your own home, use it as a wallpaper or screen background, enjoy it yourself. Not licensed for commercial use, resale, redistribution, or AI training. © Jonathan Swanson / JonSwan Productions. All rights reserved.
